growth | The Caleb Barney Collection

Getting out of your comfort zone

Most of the best things in life happen at the edges of your comfort zone. If you only want to feel comfort, you’ll be less likely to branch out/try new things, to overcome adversity, learn new skill sets, etc.

The higher degree of difficulty, the less comfortable most people are with trying to tackle that problem. If you’re willing (and able) to solve that problem, and if you can find a way to solve the problem for others too, you often are compensated (monetarily) for it. Most people want to stay in their comfort zones and are willing to trade money for comfort (paying someone else to solve their problems). There’s nothing wrong with this. We all do it, and depending on the stage of life we’re in, it may be a smarter financial decision to pay an expert/specialist to do something more efficiently so you’re not wasting your non-renewable resource (time) on something you don’t know how to do well and will end up with a worse finished product than if the expert did it in the first place.

Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.

Being curious leads to better results

Ask more questions, but ask better questions too. You already know what you think you know. Your goal should be to understand what other people know (or think they know). What can you learn from them? But don’t pester them with annoying questions.

Be curious. The more curious you are, the faster you’ll learn and grow as a person. And, hey, some additional perks are you’ll probably have some great conversations and grow stronger friendships too.

Make taking action your default tendency

When you face uncertainty, do you take action or do you pause? There’s fight, flight, or freeze.

There’s not a “one size fits all” answer for every situation. You can deal with each scenario differently, and depending on the urgency of what you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, your previous history with that person/scenario, and the risk/reward balance, you may choose differently.

But we all have a default action or inaction that we take.

I tend to lean towards taking action. Instead of thinking about doing things, just do them. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but you’ll also end up getting much more done than those who default to pausing/talking things over.

Default towards taking action. Be aggressive. Don’t be passive.

Success leaves clues

Look around you and figure out what successful people have done in order to set themselves up to achieve that level of success. Tease out the similarities in what many successful people are doing to get them there. Their individual tactics may be slightly different, but I can almost guarantee that they have a similar mindset or strategy.

What did they do to achieve success that other successful people have also done? Correlation does not equal causation, but if you continue to see the same patterns over and over, you can at least increase your odds of achieving success. Look for the clues to lead you there. Listen for them. Then act on them.

Pain is subjective: How to get comfortable with the uncomfortable

“The reason his fights look so easy is because his training was so hard.” – Paraphrased from Joe Rogan when he was talking about Floyd Mayweather.

Train to make the uncomfortable not phase you. If that is your baseline and you’re used to facing obstacles, it will become your new normal. But to someone who hasn’t faced those same difficulties, when they suddenly are thrown into a tough situation, it will be harder for them mentally, physically, and emotionally.

How do you get comfortable with the uncomfortable?

A huge part of it is mental fitness. Mental fitness is more than just being mentally tough. Being tough (or being able to endure) is just one aspect of your mental fitness, but being able to understand concepts, to think outside of the box, to have a good memory. and to be flexible in a changing environment all contribute to being mentally fit.

The other part (the “easier” part) is physical fitness. Again, you want to be physically tough and able to hold up to pressure, but physics fitness also includes strength, endurance, flexibility, mobility, balance, coordination, having a healthy heart and joints, etc.

If you are mentally and physically fit, it will be easier to overcome challenging situations. So what are some things you can do to become fit?

Train your body consistently to lift heavy weights for low reps, to lift light weights for high reps, to sprint short distances at fast speeds, to walk/run/bike long distances at slow speeds, to occasionally work with very little sleep, to occasionally work with very little to eat, to think fast and make quick decisions, to analyze and think slowly, to deal with the heat, to deal with the cold, to read/write/draw, etc. These are just a few examples…

There are so many ways you can train your body and mind at the same time. Do a difficult task daily, one that pushes your existing comfort levels, because the more difficult you make your training, the easier your life will be. If your training is harder than the actual event, you’ll remain strong physically and, more importantly, you’ll remain strong mentally and emotionally. This will give you the edge you need over your competition.

Pain is subjective – it changes based on the perspective of who is going through the experience. Running a mile at a sub 6-minute clip is easy for those who do it consistently, but for the untrained person, this will probably be very painful. What will you do today to increase your fitness and increase your pain threshold?